In 2007, for the first time in 15 years, the famously shy Gerhard Richter agreed to appear on camera for a film by Corinna Belz, called Gerhard Richter’s Window. Now, 13 years later, she has made a follow-up movie, Gerhard Richter Painting. It is not explanatory but exploratory, patiently silent as Richter makes a series of abstract paintings. “You can only express in words what words are capable of expressing, what language can communicate,” he says. “Painting has nothing to do with that.” Applying strata after strata of paint with a large heavy squeegee dragged across the canvas, the process is both pragmatic and poetic. Destruction and creation become one. —E.C.